Younger than she is, quick-skinned, smiling;
Her husband took to him like a father,
The stutter of him tangled itself in that boy's fast water speech.
She pictures him sat between them,
Like a son and not like a son, a new eroticism

To him. Her husband promises to be tender to the boy,
Like a father might. The boy's father is a traitor,
Is loyal to her father, who is not like
A father but like a king, like a cataclysm moving
Across her skin - she asked him to be father

And not king and though he is not king he is not father,
So she is not daughter but beast. Her husband
Is soft for all the mud in him, looks at the boy with softness;
She could be his mother, both of them fatherless things.